I started trying to learn Linux last week. I've got Mint Linux running and I have just been getting more and more frustrated. I'm not giving up but just wondering if everyone begins with such frustration? I find tutorials and online answers but they are mostly for Ubuntu and when I try to type the commands they aren't recognized. My latest frustration is trying to get a Linksys Wireless G usb adapter to work. I don't see it on the system and everything I've searched either the commands aren't recognized. One thread I read said running the ndiswrapper made the system unstable. It is just so frustrating to a noob who doesn't know much grrrrrrr !

Hi...

I know how you feel, I've been there once myself.

Back in 2006 and 2007, I was using Ubuntu 5.10 as my sole OS, replacing Windows XP, and boy, talk about a learning curve! Learning the command line and fixing bugs and software issues, as well as compiling and installing from tar.gz files, was a challenge and a half! After about five months of that, I went back to Windows XP and didn't really touch Linux again until 2011 and 2012, when I started using Ubuntu 10.04 as my sole OS. Right before that, I was dual booting Windows Vista and Kubuntu for a few months. This time, things went much better, in part because of what I learned from 5.10.

Hang in there, take it one step at a time. As you begin to learn, it becomes easier.

Don't hesitate to ask for help when you need it, I did plenty of that on the Ubuntu forums when I was learning 5.10.

Best wishes...

i think it would be helpful if you edited the thread title with the title of your problem (something like Linksys Wireless G usb adapter problems) and in the body explain the issue and what you have tried.

For other then moral support see:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...lp-4175548743/


For future reference please do not post the same thread in different forums. If you feel that you posted in the wrong forum please use the report button to have it moved.

Thanks guys. I posted a problem thread in the hardware forum which got solved. This forum rocks! This thread was less about the problem and more about all the problems altogether that I'm experiencing. I'm not giving up I love learning new stuff and I like what I've learned so far. I just thought another noob coming in might see the thread and not feel so alone. Thanks ardvark71 really cool experience and thanks for your help in the other thread. I'm pretty proficient with Mac OS and Windows since I deal with them on a daily basis. So now I'm dealing with an OS I don't know much about but I've got a ton of stuff to read and go through. Is there a reason why some commands don't work in Linux Mint? Are they specific to a certain distro?

Hi...

You're welcome, I'm glad we were able to help.

I think most Linux commands are universal, however, there are some that distribution specific. Some require specific packages to be installed. Can you give us examples of the ones you tried that didn't work?

BTW, could you mark the thread concerning your USB adapter as "SOLVED?" Thanks!

Regards...

Some distros include some of their own programs, such as Ubuntu, & whilst being based on Debian, some things are different.
TinyCore is another as is TAILS, but most commands are used the same.

Yes it is frustrating. I will agree that it gets worse when you perform web searches and find multiple pieces of advice, some of it fringe, and you either have zero idea what's right to follow, or worse you "try" one or two of those advices only to find that they lead you down a rathole where you're now worse off because you spent 1/2 a day doing the equivalent of nothing.

Having said that. Sorry to hear. How about we address one thing at a time?

Firstly, are you running a full desktop with a GUI, or no graphical interface and only at what we call the command line?

I guess full desktop with GUI since you mention MINT and that's a full desktop distribution. But please comment on this.

Linksys Wireless G USB adapter. What exact model?

What you can do to diagnose if the system sees it are a few things:
- In command line, or a terminal window which you can open from your start menu. You can type commands like: dmesg and lsusb.

dmesg spits out your system logs. The most useful way to use it here would be to get that system log just dumped out with the USB adapter NOT plugged in. Then plug in that adapter and get the system log dumped out again. What is helpful is to note the previous end of the last log, there are timestamps and logs that you can just view and remember or briefly write down. You can also dump that entire log to a file by doing something like:And that should place it into your user's home directory under the name "system_log_1.txt" or any other name you feel you wish to use. And after plugging in your USB adapter, you can then do the same either on screen or to a different name. You should see some new log entries indicating what happened when the system saw this new device.

Note: If you see nothing, then something is wrong. The device was not seen electrically. Therefore there's something wrong with the cable, the device, or the USB jack you plugged it into. Debug maybe by trying to plug in a keyboard or mouse to that same USB port and see if that works at all.

- The lsusb command will tell you what USB devices are detected on your system.

For instance this is the output of my system's lsusb command:This says I have a multicard reader for SD cards, Compact Flash, and other smart media card types, and some other devices. My mouse and keyboard are USB so likely they are some of those. I think the Chicony one is an MP3 medial player. Either case I could look up the exactness using those hex ID numbers like 0bda:0151. No need, my devices are detected and working. But we would use your report to determine what vendor ID and such your USB wireless adapter is, providing it is detected.

You can post the new logs detected after plugging in your device as well as the output of the lsusb command and then we can provide some assistance. The next steps would be to determine if there are correct drivers on your system. For now the best thing to do is to get data as to whether or not the device is being detected and enumerated by your system.

Sorry for the length. But also welcome to the forums!

here are two commands I found and the errors I get when I try to perform them.

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/...psfy5gujbc.png

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/...pszb4kgn39.png

Thanks for the post

Those didn't work. Meaning the commands showed nothing useful, the links and pictures worked.

How about the output of "lsusb" with the USB WIFI adapter plugged in.

How about the output of any differences to the system log "dmesg" between having it unplugged and then plugged in. Note that your entire system log is not necessary just the new logs after you plug in the adapter. If there are no new logs, that is very important to note too.

sorry yeah the pictures are what happens when I do the commands. lsusb worked which is how I created the thread. The problem is solved I'm just trying to figure out why the commands don't work for me. It's prob obvious or something not installed but being new to all of it I don't know yet.

Hi...

For the one involving gedit, make sure you have the package "gedit" installed. For the other, you run the lspci command by itself. Example...

Hope that helps...

Like a couple of members have already stated; things can be hard in the beginning. Hang in there bro! I remember when I first started out with GNU/Linux, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (phew, I am getting old) on an iMac G3. That took me an entire day, and a lot of headache. Then I got a used laptop PC for free, and did the same, which was easier, but I remember a TON of grief with the WiFi driver (I still remember something about an fsam module, *brrr*).

Anyway, I digress. The commands you took pictures of do not work because:
1. lspci is not located in /sbin/lspci, but in /usr/bin/lspci. At least on my Debian system, which both Ubuntu and Mint are based on. If you are ever curious about WHERE in the filesystem a command (or program) is located, you can always issue the command which, like so:
2. The reason gedit is a 'command not found' is (most likely) because the program gedit is not installed in Mint. You CAN install it if you want to. I don't know my way around Mint and its user interface, but there ought to be a tool for that. Otherwise, you can install it by issuing the command:
Now, going back to the beginning of my post a little. At least when I started out with GNU/Linux, I expected NOTHING to 'just work', I also accepted the fact that I had to learn a whole new way of doing things. GNU/Linux is NOT Windows, nor is it OS X (even though they are similar, due to OS X running a bastardized BSD version 'under the hood').

Was it worth all the hassle? HELL YEAH!

Best regards,
HMW

One of the big things you need to get used to on Linux is reading error messages. Windows has error messages, thousands of them, but they are so ridiculously uninformative and useless that it might as well just be a big red X that appears on screen. On the other hand, Linux error messages are actually useful. They tell you exactly what the problem is, and often times they'll tell you how to fix it.

For example, on Windows you might click on an option and it'll pop up with a message like the following:
On Linux, the same error might look like:
Time and time again you'll see "Windows users" come on this forum and ask for help, saying "I tried to do X, but it didn't work". They don't provide the error, probably because they never even READ the error, because they're so used to Windows error messages that their eyes just glaze over and they click OK. The vast majority of the time the conversation goes like this:

Q: I tried to do X, but it didn't work
A: Was there an error message? What happened? What was the result? Saying "it didn't work" doesn't help us much
Q: The error I got was, "Unable to start program due to incompatible kernel module, please run '/etc/init.d/prog rebuild' to rebuild the kernel module".
A: Ok, did you read the error? Did you run "/etc/init.d/prog rebuild"? What happened?
Q: Problem solved, thanks


When you see an error in Linux, READ IT. Try to understand what it's telling you. In the case above:
That's bash (your shell) telling you that it wasn't able to find the file "/sbin/lspci", pretty straight forward. There are only two possibilities, either your system doesn't have lspci installed, or it does and it's not located in /sbin/. Running "which lspci" or "locate lspci" would let you know where it is if you have it. If nothing can find it, you can probably safely assume it's not installed, in which case you can install it using your package manager.

Conversely, once you get used to Linux error messages, and taking what they tell you and turning that into a solution, going back to Windows is INFURIATING. It is my single biggest complaint with Windows and Windows software. When something goes wrong, it doesn't tell you ANYTHING about what went wrong or how to fix it, it just says "error" and assumes you'll move on to other things and forget about it. Half the time I'm using Windows I'm yelling at it, "WHAT ERROR!?!?! Tell me what happened so I can f'ing fix it for you!".

It's a different mindset. Windows is designed under the assumption that its users are absolute idiots. That doesn't mean it's idiot-proof, what it means is that when anything goes wrong, it assumes you're too stupid to fix it, so it doesn't even bother telling you what went wrong. It either crashes inexplicably, or it makes some assumptions and decisions on your behalf and does something stupid as a result. Linux on the other hand is designed under the assumption that its users are reasonably intelligent. This means two things: 1) It won't hold your hand through easy stuff, and 2) when something goes wrong, it gives you enough information about what went wrong so that you can look into and fix the problem. But you have to do your part, you have to read and understand what it's telling you and decide on the best course of action.

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